CREATURE OF THE DAY 2018-2020

Since my wildlife photo expeditions are almost always solo and last for hours, my mind wanders. I FREE ASSOCIATE. Some of this mental debris shows up as text in the CREATURE OF THE DAY entries. The text may explain something about the creature's natural history, or perhaps the circumstances that led to the photo. Sometimes I just rant about the grotesque, horrifying grammatical errors that would surely trigger a seizure in dear Miss Hancock, my cherished third grade teacher, who taught us the arcane art of diagramming sentences. Yes, dear readers, adverbs and adjectives are two entirely different things.SCROLL DOWN this page to see 2018-2020 Creature of the Day entries. Use the buttons below for previous years.

​​Creatures of the Day: US + Covid-19 (April 4, 2020)

​FINALLY: FACTS about FRICATIVESWhile medical experts at UCSF, California Department of Public Health, WHO, The White House/Jared Kushner*, and CDC are generally reliable sources of public health information, Creature of the Day recognizes its special responsibility to supplement so-called “credible” sources with INDEPENDENT ADVISORIES from the staff at our own Creature Research Advancement Program (CRAP).One wonders: Why are major media refusing to report on the urgent issue of FRICATIVES, a dangerous vector for pathogens totally ignored by the epidemiologists at WHO and CDC?“FRICATIVE” is defined ever-so-gently by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a consonant-sound, produced by the friction of the breath through a narrow opening between two of the mouth-organs”. TO CLARIFY the typical British linguistic delicacy of the OED, what they really mean is the disgusting near-expectoration that accompanies certain words and phrases in Scotch Gaelic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Welsh, Yiddish, Arabic, Dutch, Irish, Albanian, German, Turkish, dozens of other languages and most extravagantly, Klingon. Fricative consonants can project dangerous, um, “droplets” long distances when certain words and expressions are used with even moderate enthusiasm. Recent CRAP studies demonstrate that expressions like “L’CHAIM”, a common celebratory Yiddish/Hebrew expression meaning “to life” proclaimed joyously when lifting a glass of sweet concord grape wine (or peppermint schnapps) in the course of celebrations such as weddings, graduations, or the arrival of good news about a recent colonoscopy, can launch dangerous “organic material” across a typical family dinner table with a shocking variety of unfortunate consequences. During the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, CRAP strongly recommends speaking only fricatively-gentle languages such as Hawaiian.Aloha,Dave

Footnotes​* as if

​​Creatures of the Day: US + Covid-19 (March 28, 2020)

Photo: Saturday morning at about 10:00 AM looking south along MLK near Children’s Hospital, Oakland ​

​​Creatures of the Day: Sanderlings (mostly) (January 24, 2020)

​Today’s photo shows a flock of shorebirds in flight near Abbotts Lagoon. Most of them are Sanderlings. A few slightly darker birds are Dunlins.

Today’s RANT: Millions vs. Billions

We often hear references to “MILLIONAIRES and BILLIONAIRES” when candidates rail against ultrarich tax breaks, corrupt subsidies, and other kleptocratic outrages. Pulitzer Prize winners at journalism’s zenith (New York Times, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Washington Post, etc.) do much of the investigative heavy lifting, exposing and explaining these crucial issues. Conversely (at journalism’s nadir) Creature of the Day focuses its formidable editorial laser on critical pedantic details consistently overlooked by the big shots.

We recoil in stunned incredulity as politicians conflate MILLIONAIRES with BILLIONAIRES, using these terms as if they’re synonyms. My dear readers, when one word represents something 1000 times bigger than another, the words not synonyms. Is ONE CUP of coffee the same as 62.5 GALLONS of coffee? Of course not. I hardly ever drink 62.5 gallons of coffee, especially just before boarding a cross-country flight in a coach window seat locked in for the duration by a pair of Ambien-loving 250 pound octagon fighters.

​There are hundreds of thousands of lovely, modest people (nurses, engineers, accountants, quark enumerators, ferret psychologists, adjunct professors of bovine solipsism) who wisely bought a small Bay Area house in the 70s or 80’s, never made more than moderate 5-figure incomes, and budgeted prudently. Their net worth of $1 million comes from their current home equity in the insane Bay Area housing market. Alas, they’re ELMs, Entry Level Millionaires. And they are fortunate indeed, but BILLIONAIRES are different. ELMs don’t have

OK, now let’s imagine that you are an Entry Level Millionaire and I’m a Billionaire. (I like this game… FUN!!) We go out to a PRETTY FANCY lunch. (We know it’s PRETTY FANCY because the menu descriptions consist of untranslated food words in Hmong, Basque, Farsi, Mixtec, Icelandic, Tamil, Inuit, Samoan, Tajik, Estonian and -- rather ostentatiously -- Gaktai**.) Nice lunch, great service; you’re in a good mood so you stuff a $20 bill into the tip jar. So generous; it feels GREAT, doesn’t it?! In order for the tip to FEEL the same to me (remember, I’m 1000 times richer than you -- yay) I have to stuff $20,000 into the tip jar. My cash is also in $20 bills, so I have to ask someone in my entourage to peel off 1000 of them (from that enormous cash wad my staff brings along in a titanium wheelbarrow for my Impulsive Incidentals) and stuff each one into that little jar on the counter labeled “Tipping is SEXY!” Yes, it is.

Footnotes

* “Supercomplication” sounds way cooler when pronounced in French.** “Gaktai” is a language spoken in remote regions on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea

​​Creature of the Day: Red-tailed Hawk (December 16, 2019)

STEALTH for RAPTORS made EASY!Lesson 1 ​

​​Creature of the Day: TURKEY DAY 2019 (November 28, 2019)

​​Creatures of the Day: 1 Spider & 4 birds (November 8, 2019)

Dear Creature of the Day readers,

Photo #1: This cobweb was extravagantly decorated with dew drops, and illuminated by the early morning sun. Although the spider is clearly a capable technical artist, the work is tediously jejune; a tepid effigy of a drip-period Jackson Pollock. Obviously.

Photo #2: I chose the diabolically clever title “4 birds on a wire” because “The Night Watch” had been used, apparently, by someone else. There was another reason: I shot the photo during daytime. (The white disk is the sun, not the moon. It was a foggy morning.)

Considering my interest in CREATURES including humans, I’m distraught -- as all of us should be -- over the rapidly deteriorating condition of EARTH, so it was inevitable that I’d be wrestling with my own carbon budget and the need to reduce it. OK, here comes my CONFESSION -- which I had hoped to deliver on live TV while sitting across from Oprah (much like the Lance Armstrong interview) with Tears of Shame gushing from my eyes in an orgy of pathos and self-loathing: “I like cereal and milk, and I consume a lot of both. Yes, in the morning, occasionally at lunch, often for a late-night snack, even at 3:00 AM on sleepless nights – and usually… OMG, with strawberries.” I know. I know. Milk comes from cows, right? Billions of cows are raised for beef and for dairy products like, milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream.* Considering the havoc that cow agriculture visits upon the earth (e.g., toxic, flammable methane clouds erupting from both ends of a cow, massive destruction of tropical rainforests to establish cow pastures, grossly inefficient use of energy, water and chemical inputs in animal agriculture compared with plant agriculture), I have endeavored diligently to reduce and eventually eliminate milk from my diet. Fortunately, there are vegan alternatives to cow’s milk:

There are so many almond milk products! (I’m still searching for ARTISANAL farm-to-table almond milk.) As I reduce my consumption of meat and commit enthusiastically to almond milk as a wholesale replacement of cow’s milk in my diet, I timidly claim an unimpressive but gradually improving position on the VEGAN SPECTRUM.

Very best,Dave

*Are EGGS dairy products? Safeway executives position eggs in the ‘dairy case’ next to 47 types of butter. However, contrary to rabid accusations of “hoax” and “fake news” from the usual conservative news outlets, most experts agree that eggs emerge from the rear ends of chickens, not cows.

​You’re welcome.

​​Creatures of the Day: Syrphid Fly + 3 (September 8, 2019)

Photo #1 shows a Syrphid fly, also known as a hoverfly or flower fly. It looks like a wasp, doesn’t it? When evolution results in a benign (i.e., tasty) creature who benefits from closely resembling a formidable one, biologists call it Batesian mimicry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batesian_mimicry

Photo #2 shows a Great Horned Owl illustrating another evolutionary protection mechanism: camouflage. I took this photo near Kehoe Beach, Point Reyes.

Photo #3 is an image of a painted concrete wall and a cloudy sky.

Photo #4 is a gently edited photo of my car’s windshield reflecting a section of Webster Street between 21st and 22nd.

AND NOW, the Creature of the Day Literature Department presents a one paragraph storyette based on ACTUAL EVENTS:

Thaddeus Floozwort, a longtime resident of a south Florida gated community, entered his recently remodeled kitchen in hip waders. A stinking cocktail of filthy water, diesel fuel, raw sewage, and other foul substances filled his house to the windowsills. Rising sea levels, storm surges, and heavy rains flooded his townhouse for the fifth time in eight years. “Climate change is a hoax”, said Thadeus with a smirk of certitude, punctuated by toxic gunk exclamation points spattered all over his face. But Thadeus didn’t worry. FEMA runs our National Flood Insurance Program (actuarially preposterous, mostly covering properties in Florida and Texas) which was about $25 billion in debt to taxpayers as of August 2017.

QUESTION: Are you annoyed and frustrated by someone who tenaciously insists on believing stupid s**t, especially PAC-funded fiction that’s DEMONSTRABLY WRONG? Here’s the good news! The English language provides a wonderfully expressive, rarely used word for such a person: MUMPSIMUS, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “A person who obstinately adheres to old ways in spite of clear evidence that they are wrong; an ignorant and bigoted opponent of reform”. Thaddeus Floozwort is a MUMPSIMUS.

And now, a true story (with some details altered to protect certain parties):

THE JAZZ CONCERT ​We heard about a dinner concert described as a CABARET SHOW featuring a few singers and a terrific quintet performing jazz standards. Nice! Let’s go.The buffet dinner was insipid, but so what? We were there for the music. The quintet warmed up with a couple of kinetic instrumentals. They were superb musicians with great improvisational imagination -- sax, horn, keyboard, bass, drums. The crowd’s applause for each of their solos was enthusiastic and genuine. Then, after an unctuous introduction by the M.C, a slender, 40-ish singer came onto the stage, dressed like a real Eisenhauer-era cabaret singer in sparkling stiletto heels and a slinky sequined dress. After some faux-intimate microphone patter, she counted off her tempo to the band leader, fingers snapping, and began singing "Corcovado", known in English as "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" -- the sexy and canonical bossa nova song written by Antônio Carlos Jobim in 1960.As jazz standard fans, everybody in the room knew this beautiful song. Since 1960, Corcovado has been recorded by scores of the best and most famous jazz singers in the world, from João Gilberto, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson, Doris Day, and Ella Fitzgerald to Queen Latifah, Art Garfunkel, Diana Krall and Andrea Bocelli. So, it takes solid confidence and rare talent to cover a world heritage song like that. OUR singer’s confidence was massive, immense, titanic -- but her ability to find a pitch was… elusive as a quark. She hunted for notes like they were truffles, hidden beneath the duff and moist soils of an ancient forest. It’s one thing to take on a song like this in the shower, or maybe a karaoke bar with a bunch of tipsy friends. It’s another to do it from a stage, backed up by a professional quintet in front of a room full of paying customers. Yikes.And then she sang another song. And another. And another. And another. Our group of six of sat in a cluster around one table. During song #1, we didn’t look at each other, we just sat stoically through the virtual defenestration of Antônio Carlos Jobim. By the second song, everyone was squirming and wincing. By the third song, we were exchanging incredulous glances, and struggling to repress laughter. OMG. This was a survival situation! We’ve all heard those stories about FOXHOLES, and PRAYING in the face of mortal peril, haven’t we? Now I understand. With my arms reaching plaintively skyward, and with my voice booming, channeling Charlton Heston in one of those lords-and-swords-and-sandals epics, I found myself PRAYING: “OH, DARK LORDS OF PLATE TECTONICS, give us a moderate earthquake. I’m thinking 5.3 with an epicenter nearby, and just to be clear, nothing seriously destructive, but sufficient to get everyone out of their chairs and running toward the fire exits. Amen.”​

​​Creature of the Day: Red-tailed Hawk (January 28, 2019)

Like most wildlife except maybe barnacles who are relaxed and confident, birds tend to be twitchy, paranoid, judgmental and skittish – hysterically fleeing whenever someone approaches (crashing noisily through the brush with 25 pounds of camera equipment, much of it pointed directly at the bird while loudly clicking). Getting close for a photograph usually requires STEALTH.Effective stealth would be easy with a cloaking device, but such devices exist only in fiction (e.g., Star Trek, Harry Potter) …as far as I know. The next best thing is to dress up in “full-camo” i.e., macho military-style camouflage clothing from head to toe including the notorious balaclava, a scary knitted face mask often associated with mayhem, in order to blend in with -- you know -- the trees and bushes. However, walking into a 7-11 or a coffee shop in such a costume tends to provoke 911 calls, and the dramatic arrival of heavily armed police SWAT teams (who, in an ironic “who-wears-it-best”, are also wearing macho military-style camouflage clothing from head to toe including the notorious balaclava). So, I tend to avoid the camo and just wear tasteful greens and browns. Rarely but occasionally I encounter a fearless creature who isn’t remotely threatened by me, my big camera, or my fashion choices. Such was the case with today’s Creature, a handsome juvenile Red-tailed Hawk who graciously posed for portraits.

​​Creature of the Day: Western Gull (December 31, 2018)

Most of my Creature photos are taken with a 600mm lens, but I sent it out for repairs two weeks ago. Today’s photo is from my archives -- a Western Gull posing in studio-like lighting on a patch of Pt. Reyes sand. My challenge for this issue is to seamlessly transition from a description of a bird photo to my TRAGIC story, below, so let’s move on clumsily to…THE ICE CREAM CATASTROPHE, a mostly true story in 256 wordsAs we sat watching something highly recommended and totally incomprehensible on NETFLIX, I remembered that a small amount of excellent vanilla ice cream was leftover in the freezer. My brain switched to the Ice Cream Channel. I visualized ice cream with something extravagant poured over it. So I walked to the kitchen, removed two small bowls from the cupboard, and carefully divided the precious ice cream between them. It wasn’t much, maybe 2 ounces each, but it would help restore our damaged spirits which had been deeply eroded by relentless waves of toxic media waste washing over us in High Definition. After careful consideration, I chose a teaspoon of Scharffen Berger Unsweetened Natural Cocoa Powder dusted over mine; she chose Hidden Star Orchards Pomegranate Juice Extract, 6X Concentrate poured over hers. (These were serious, potent condiments.) After applying the cocoa powder to the ice cream in bowl #1, I reached into the refrigerator for the pomegranate juice extract, unscrewed the cap, and poured an ostentatious glug-glug-glug over bowl #2. But it didn’t smell quite right. In my frenzy of anticipation, I had taken a similar but slightly larger bottle from the refrigerator. It wasn’t pomegranate juice extract, it was TRADER JOE’S SOYAKI, “A Unique Teriyaki Marinade for Meat, Fish, & Poultry”. I panicked, grabbing the soy-sauce-drenched ice cream from the bowl in one hand, and diving desperately for the kitchen faucet with the other. I would wash the melting ice cream -- now tightly gripped within my soy sauce coated fist. It did not go well.​

​​Creature of the Day: Red-tailed Hawk (juvenile) (November 16, 2018)

Red-tailed hawks are common in west Marin, but getting close can be difficult. After years of chasing raptors with a camera, I realized that Point Reyes raptors conduct themselves according to rigid photographic rules. Charismatic raptors are required to pose majestically – in ideal light -- on utility poles, rock outcrops, and fenceposts along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. They wait patiently for park visitors in passing cars to notice and admire them. (Cars sometimes stop in the middle of the road to shoot photos because there are few turnouts.) If someone emerges from a car with a camera, especially an expensive camera with a big telephoto lens, the majestic raptor -- at the last possible millisecond – flies away (laughing) just as the dumb human raises the camera to a shooting position. If the photographer is insufficiently skilled, the camera will capture a vacant utility pole, rock outcrop, or fencepost. However, if the photographer is experienced, highly skilled, and has invested SIGNIFICANT resources in superior equipment, the image of a vacant utility pole, rock outcrop, or fencepost will be in sharp focus, perfectly exposed.​

​​Creature of the Day:Common Raven (November 6, 2018)

OPTIMISM and MISINTERPRETATIONI spotted a raven perched at the top of a tree with a walnut in its mouth. Although ravens are known to be impressively intelligent (and might crack the nut by dropping it onto rocks from a substantial height), the image makes me think the caption should be “OPTIMISM!”. I like to think this bird will make a fine snack of the walnut, sooner or later. However, as an untrained amateur, my keen insights into animal behavior are probably wrong most of the time. Maybe the walnut doesn’t represent food at all. Maybe it’s a toy, or a territorial defense demonstration, or a fitness display, or an exercise ball, or an art project. A few nights ago I was watching a French film subtitled in English. The dialog was verbose and rapid, so the subtitles required speed reading. But wait! I know a little French (two years in high school, two semesters in college – OK -- 50 years ago, but…). I was tempted to abandon the subtitles and just LISTEN to the dialog! I listened and translated: Sauvage, wild; femme, woman; quotidien, daily; amour, love; six heure, six o’clock; salaud, bastard; lèvres, lips; extase, ecstasy; (easy!) épaule, shoulder (I’m doing great) élastique, elastic, flexible (another cognate! Booyah!); flics, cops (I’m killing it!); artichaut, artichoke (metaphor? um, ok); excentrique, kinky (a bold guess, assisted by the visuals); crépuscule, twilight (good one, Dave). I estimated that I could successfully translate 5% of the dialog. In defeat, I returned to the subtitles. Merde.TODAY’S BONUS PHOTO: an abstract from a one second moving camera image of fall foliage.VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! THREE TIMES IS PROBABLY ENOUGH​

​​Creatures of the Day:Coyote and Ring-billed Gull(September 17, 2018)

Where’s the coyote?​Wildlife photography is usually an exercise in getting closer, which can be quite difficult. Most creatures, including non-narcissistic humans, are instinctively threatened by the approach of a strange man with a great big camera pointed straight at them while clicking (the camera, not the man) loudly 8 times per second. On a recent beautiful morning near Limantour Beach, I spotted the subtle movement of something at a considerable distance. Way off to the west, a coyote was hunting at the edge of Drake’s Estero, nicely lit by the rising sun directly behind me. Later, I checked a topo map and found that the coyote was about 350 yards away, i.e., pretty damn far.

Although I normally try to get close-up photos of wildlife, I appreciated this long view of the estero, Drake’s Head, and our featured coyote along with scores of birds. There were no signs of human presence in the frame. The photo could have been taken 5000 years ago (although the notoriously unreliable cameras of that era were made of willow, pine sap, and oyster shells, and did not support wireless uploads to Facebook and Instagram). Did you spot the coyote? It’s in the horizontal center at the water’s near edge.​BONUS PHOTOS: For those Creature of the Day readers who will send me nasty-grams if I don’t include creature close-ups, here’s a 3rd-year Western Gull wading in the soothing Pacific foam, and another coyote seen later the same day contemplating the big issues.​Bye-bye summer 2018 (but fall is nice too),​Dave

​​Creature of the Day:California Giant Salamander(August 19, 2018)

While riding up Limantour Road (Pt. Reyes N.S.) on my mt. bike with Dave and Charlie this morning, I saw a 9-inch long, ground-hugging brownish creature in the middle of the road. I got off my bike, took a closer look and recognized it, although until today I’d only seen photos and descriptions in field guides. The California Giant Salamander is beautifully marked and much bigger than all the other salamanders seen around here. (disclosure: This is the first time Creature of the Day has published a photo taken with my iPhone camera. OMG.) I removed this handsome creature from the road, took this portrait on top of a nearby rock (a place you’d never find this critter naturally) and then placed it in a safer, wetter spot far from the road – after drenching it with water from my backpack to re-hydrate it.

And now: A SAN ANSELMO STORY in one paragraph​The Red Hill shopping center has a frozen yogurt shop with easy parking, so I stopped last week to get my fix after a tough bike ride on the water district lands near Fairfax. While in a fatigue-induced torpor, I pulled the lever, serving myself a modest extrusion of vanilla. Looking up, I realized that I was queued up behind a 40-ish mom with three young boys. I guessed that the boys were 5, 6, and 7 with the look of triplets, except in different sizes. The beautifully coifed mom, wearing sun glasses with conspicuous Gucci logos, severely high-heeled sandals, and calf tattoos (Minnie Mouse left, peace symbol right) was absorbed and oblivious as her thumbs, in a virtuoso blur, appeared to be polishing the screen of an iPhone X. The kids were taking their time. Oreo bits, M&Ms, snowcaps, gummy bears, rainbow sprinkles, chocolate chips, Skittles, chocolate rocks, Butterfinger crumbs, nonpareils, frosted animal cookies, and Cap’n Crunch Crunch-Berries were sprayed all over the sneeze-shielded counter and the floor. Amidst this toppings orgy, massive quantities of the stuff improbably landed in the three enormous paper yogurt tubs -- on top of even-more-massive folds of yogurt in gaudy pastels. Hey, the kids were having fun. Mom was cool with it. I lunged ahead suddenly but shamelessly, butting in front of mom and the boys at the cash register. Crazy old man. Nobody called the cops. $3.27 and I was out of there without looking back.

​​Creature of the Day:Common Raven(August 06, 2018)

A few days ago, I joined a small group of Marin County birders for an early morning walk around Rodeo Lagoon in the Marin Headlands. Although socially this group was modest and casual, optically and ornithologically, they were methodical and serious about identifying and counting every bird seen. Assisting our sixteen eyeballs were eight pair of damn nice binoculars and a couple of 60-power field scopes. In this group, COOL is determined by one’s knowledge of birds and particularly the ability to identify them at a great distance. A full spectrum of birding experience was represented in this amiable group, bookended by a couple of encyclopedic master birders on one end and me on the other. These people can routinely identify undistinguished LBBs (little brown birds) at 200 yards by their flight style, habitat, behavior, vocalizations, seasonal distribution, and other factors that have little to do with the up-close appearance of the bird as seen in field guides. They are cautious and scrupulously honest about their IDs, cross checking each other on every call. (All the IDs and counts are uploaded to www.eBird.org, a worldwide database of avian distribution and abundance.)However, I had the biggest camera.Happy Summer,DaveP.S: THE OTHER PHOTO is a Honeybee on a California Wild Rose.

​​Creature of the Day:Blue-eyed Darner(July 07, 2018)

IN THIS ISSUE: MORE PHOTOS, FEWER RANTSThe earthy browns and brilliant turquoise of the Blue-eyed Darner look like the work of Hopi or Navaho jewelers. Spectacular dragonflies have been around for about 300 million years. The largest insect fossil ever discovered, a pre-dragonfly called Meganeuropsis americana (found in Oklahoma, 1940) had a wingspan of about 28 inches. THAT’S A BIG BUG. Just imagine the inconvenience of a single Meganeuropsis americana squashed on your sun glasses during a breezy motorcycle ride. In addition to their charismatic beauty, dragonflies have some other attractive properties: 1) they usually don’t bite people, and 2) they consume large quantities of other bugs that do – like mosquitos. TRIGGER WARNING: Dragonflies occasionally eat other dragonflies. Yes, I do have a photo of that.AND FURTHERMORE: We present evidence that the July 4th fireworks show at the Nevada County Fairgrounds was REALLY COOL.Happy Summer (wear sunscreen),Dave​

​​Creature of the Day:Sarcophagid Fly(June 19, 2018)

Word of the Day: ANNOYING

Like some friends, relatives, and artisanal handicrafts, flies are ANNOYING but can be, occasionally, quite beautiful. Some flies take serious bites out of you like the horrible Tabanids (aka HORSE FLIES) that are VERY BIG, voracious, and aggressive. The female Tabanids deliver impressively painful bites with scalpel-sharp mouthparts that pierce the skin and extract surprising volumes of blood with the efficiency of an expert phlebotomist. By comparison, today’s featured Creature, a small Sarcophagid fly, is rather benign and colorful. They’re ALMOST playful -- like tiny flying Golden Retriever puppies. Sarcophagid flies rarely bite people, they just fly around and gently ANNOY people. We swat at them, but never mind; they’re crazy fast and preternaturally agile.

Are they as ANNOYING as hordes of ear-budded millennials with identical Apple laptop computers occupying ALL the seats at ALL the tables in ALL coffee shops? Are they as annoying as TV talking heads who don’t know the difference between SILICON and SILICONE, CALVARY and CAVALRY, or FLAUNT and FLOUT? Are they as ANNOYING as the toilet paper holders found in many state parks, airports, and UC Berkeley bathrooms that are carefully engineered by EVIL GENIUSES to tempt you to hope that a few sheets might be extracted successfully? Who but a pathetic naïf thinks that the dispenser was mounted just out of reach and about 6 inches off the floor by accident? Does anyone believe that a giant roll of 1-micron (that’s 1/1000th of a millimeter!) thick toilet paper would, um, “work” even if one could extract 50 feet of it from that DIABOLICAL PUZZLE specifically designed to make you, a mature adult, crawl on your hands and knees along a public restroom floor, scratching pathetically at the inaccessible roll of t-paper, only to CRY LIKE A BABY in abject frustration at your failure to get any? See, now that’s ANNOYING.

Let’s start with a definition of a Creature of the DayPHOTO EXPEDITION: (Naturally, we form an acronym, “CotDPE”, pronounced “cod-pee”. Dear Readers, surely you are far too erudite to be tempted by comparisons with urinary excretions of certain commercially harvested fish.) For every CotDPE, I gather two to four lenses, one or two camera bodies, a flash and a trigger, an aluminum tripod, a few camera batteries, and my hiking boots. Then I get into my car and drive to a regional, state, or national park -- early in the morning, sometimes RADICALLY early in the morning. Yawn. AND THEN I wander around looking for creatures. Since it’s pointless to chase most wild animals, especially birds, I normally stake out a promising spot with the good light (i.e., rising sun) coming from behind me so that in front of me, where I’m pointing my camera, I’ll have a well-lit creature -- IF THE %$#@ CREATURE HAS THE GOOD JUDGEMENT TO MOVE INTO MY FIELD OF VIEW AND POSE WITH AT LEAST ONE EYE LOOKING DOWN MY LENS BARREL. Are you getting the geometry of this? If a Sasquatch is more than 30 degrees off my “good light” centerline, the photo won’t be any good, SO WHY EVEN BOTHER?Every CotDPE is different. Sometimes I come back with nothing but discharged batteries, muddy boots, a few ticks exploring my intimate regions while enjoying a leisurely dégustation, and 500 frames of visual dross. Sometimes I capture one or two credible images.This morning I spent a few hours at Briones Regional Park where I shot these photos:PHOTO #1: A centipede is seen savagely attacking a Western Bluebird. Some might interpret this image differently.PHOTO #2: This is a California Ground Squirrel, obviously a nursing female. Hello? For anyone who doubts that rodents are mammals, this photo should be diagnostic.Cheers,Dave

Photo #1: The Mourning Dove was perched on a thick black cable just above a (presumably accidental) work of art made from extravagant loops of colored electrical wire. I found this surprising juxtaposition about half-way up Mt. Diablo. The wire-art reminded me of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings http://www.china-art-discount.com/ProImages/bpic/Jackson%20Pollock/PLCK0059.JPG. Photo #2: This photo shows a female Acorn Woodpecker. Pretty bird, no? It’s springtime, so she was flying around with several members of her BREEDING COLLECTIVE. Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. Up to seven males and three females spend the season together and breed in assorted permutations and combinations. DNA analysis shows that young from a single brood often have “mixed paternity”. Duh. There’s more: The males are often brothers, and the females are often sisters! I am not making this up.Photo #3: A jet airliner flies overhead. I took this photo about 15 minutes after the Mourning Dove photo. I’d like to imagine the passengers looking out the window at Mt. Diablo and me, just as I’m looking up. However, after flying literally millions of miles on airliners, I continue to be amazed and depressed that most of my fellow passengers prefer drawing down the window shade to watch 90s TV reruns (especially Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City) on a tiny seatback video screen rather than admire the incredible WONDERS right outside the window -- flying through the air at 600 miles-per-hour, seven miles above the surface of the earth. Wow.Springtime Cheers,Dave​

​​Creature of the Day:Sarcophagid Fly(March 31, 2018)

Creature of the Day hasn’t featured an insect for quite a while, so I added two macro lenses and a Speedlite to my bag for a trip to my TOP SECRET location in Samuel Taylor State Park. Arriving just after dawn at a creekside parking area, it was cold – maybe 38-39, but the sky was clear. As I stepped out of the car, I felt a brief but impressively heavy downpour on my head and shoulders. Huh? Like I said, the sky was clear. I looked up. No, it wasn’t a cloudburst. I had just been sh#t-bombed by a pair of big Western Gulls who must have misinterpreted my intentions. (Don’t we all feel misinterpreted sometimes?) From the amount of smelly ‘material’ covering my car and especially me, I expected to see a Rottweiler, or maybe a small rhinoceros flying overhead. I double-checked; no – they were definitely birds, flying toward Olema (and laughing hysterically, I think). The sun was just rising, and the grassy hillside at LOCATION X-41 was wet. Curious but cautious, two black-tailed deer watched me from about 100 yards up the hill. I found a charming and charismatic fly (Sarcophagidae) stuck in a spider web. Dewdrops decorated the web extravagantly.

Photo #1 shows the fly, barely tangled in the finest strands of the web. The fly eventually gets free. The dewdrops evaporate as the sun rises.

Photo #2 shows the web with its optically mysterious dewdrops, but no fly. The spider, architect of this spectacular structure, will miss a meal.

NOTE: There are still places where “web” refers to a spectacularly beautiful structure made of proteinaceous silk and built by a spider.AND FURTHERMORE, I heard a joke that goes something like this: The parents of a little boy are severely distressed that he hasn’t spoken since he was born although he’s otherwise active and healthy. They took him to neurologists, psychiatrists, speech pathologists, and others -- but nobody made any progress with his condition. One day, when he was 4 years old, he looked up from his breakfast and said, “This toast is cold”. Both parents nearly collapsed in shock, but they were relieved and overjoyed. “Oh my god, you spoke! Why didn’t you speak for so long?”. The little boy shrugged. “Up until now, everything was fine.”Happy Spring,Dave​

When observing animals, we’re tempted to interpret their behaviors in anthropomorphic terms. Huge advances have been made in methods for observing and recording animal behavior – even their brain waves -- but without comprehensible communication between the animals and us, interpretation of these behaviors ranges from highly speculative to pure nonsense. Maybe the famous hand-signing gorilla Koko represents a limited exception, but Koko’s putative language capabilities are vigorously disputed by many credible researchers. AND CONSIDER THIS: Do we know if your cat licks your face because he/she “loves” you or because your soap tastes good? Elementary school science-fair experiments suggest the latter.Last Friday I drove out to Point Reyes early, arriving at the small lighthouse parking area around 7:30 AM. Nobody was there. It was cold, bright, and spectacularly clear. ANIMAL BEHAVIOR was on my mind as I watched Black-tailed deer and Red-tailed hawks who seemed unusually PENSIVE. The deer moved very slowly, as if in a contemplative daze, and gazed northward at the 11 miles of “Great Beach”. The hawks flew in lazy circles. It was so clear that the Farallon Islands, actually 20 miles to the south, appeared mysteriously close to shore. What were those animals thinking?Perhaps…

reexamining unfortunate and dangerous decisions made during a wild adolescence, or

considering the role of capitalism and the crazy notion of “perpetual economic growth” on a planet with finite resources, all amid a gnawing skepticism about the recent degradation of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and especially the National Park Service. I mean, Point Reyes is a National Park, right?

PHOTO #1: The “Great Beach” at Point Reyes National Seashore. PHOTO #2: A juvenile Red-tailed Hawk stares calmly to the south, looking directly at the Farallon Islands.PHOTO #3: A contemplative doe stares calmly northward at the Great Beach for a long time without moving.PHOTO #4: A mature Red-tailed Hawk flies out to sea. There isn’t any food for a Red-tailed hawk out there. Mates? No. Best regards,Dave ​

​​UnCreature of the Day: Lunar Eclipse (February 01, 2018)

I’ve witnessed and photographed three ECLIPSE events recently: a lunar eclipse in September 2015, a solar eclipse in August 2017, and a lunar eclipse a couple of days ago. I, along with millions of other Earthlings, get an electric thrill from such amazing cosmic spectacles. It’s fun to think about the sun, the moon, and the earth cruising through space NATURALLY and PREDICTABLY(1), occasionally lining up precisely to create beautiful eclipses.Early Wednesday morning, I drove to a parking lot in the Berkeley Hills near the Lawrence Hall of Science to watch the show. It was 4:45 AM, and Grizzly Peak Blvd was quite crowded with ECLIPSE NERD traffic, mostly Priuses. The spot I selected for my eclipse watching experience, a patch of grass just below the Space Sciences Lab, was vacant and dark. The sky was clean and cloudless. Sunrise was a full hour away. PERFECT CONDITIONS! By 5:00 AM the moon was fully eclipsed and moving through the darkest zone of the earth’s shadow known as the UMBRA. As with most total lunar eclipses, the moon looked red (a “blood moon”) due to an atmospheric effect called Rayleigh scattering (for extra credit, look it up). Today’s photo shows the moon as it’s just beginning to emerge from the umbra, taken at 6:02 AM.Here's the best part: ECLIPSES are 100% FREE and 100% NATURAL! NATURAL is one of my favorite words. (I like it almost as much as ARTISANAL.) Some of our brothers and sisters tend to conflate NATURAL with GOOD, HEALTHY, or BENEFICIAL, so supermarket and drugstore shelves are jam packed with products claiming to be NATURAL! HOWEVER, let’s remember that mosquito bites, tooth decay, volcanic eruptions, sunburn, tsunamis, seasonal algae blooms, earthquakes, wildfires, pediculosis, floods, asteroid strikes, tapeworms, and certain body odors – while NATURAL -- can be unpleasant.Happy Groundhog Day,Cheers,Dave

Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, two shockingly brilliant 16th-17th century polymaths, did a pretty good job figuring out, describing and writing equations to forecast orbital motion. Later physicists (e.g., Einstein) tweaked those calculations a bit.

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Creature of the Day: White-tailed Kite (January 11, 2018)

I don’t see White-tailed Kites very often, and when I do, they’re usually too far away for a decent photograph. Yesterday I went out to MY FAVORITE WASTEWATER (gentle euphemism) TREATMENT PONDS at the end of Smith Ranch Road in San Rafael. This is a site well known to Bay Area birders as “The Las Gallinas Ponds”. Smell: often BAD. (please, don’t think too much about it) Bird sightings: usually GOOD. Birds love these ponds. Go figure. As I pulled into the gravel parking area, I saw a black and white raptor perched at the top of a big Acacia tree about 200 yards to the north. From that distance, I wasn’t sure, but I suspected it was a Kite, or maybe an Osprey. I shot a quick photo from the parking lot, expanded the image to maximum on my camera’s display. Yes, it was a Kite. I walked to a spot with decent angles and shot today’s Creature of the Day photo. Note especially the red-orange eye color. Pretty bird!CHANGING THE SUBJECT, SLIGHTLY: Did you know that LEONARDO da VINCI wrote and profusely illustrated a book (more precisely, a “codex”) meticulously analyzing bird flight, and suggesting that machines could leverage these flight principles, essentially designing the first airplanes? He wrote it around 1505. That’s 400 years before the Wright Brothers flew for the first time. OMG! And Leonardo’s interests were not limited to flight mechanics. He pursued detailed explorations, discoveries, innovations, and inventions related to mathematics, engineering, botany, paleontology, literature, astronomy, medicine, architecture, anatomy, history, music, philosophy, geology, cartography, and in his spare time developed the fundamental ideas behind the parachute, the helicopter, and military hardware such as the armored tank and double-hulled ships. Oh yeah, I almost forgot that his painting, “La Giocanda”, (aka “Mona Lisa”, hanging at the Louvre) is the most famous painting in the world, and one of his paintings of Jesus, “Salvator Mundi” sold recently at auction for over$450 million, the highest price ever paid for any painting. So naturally, I thought, I’d like to be just like Leonardo! (da Vinci, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle). But mastering all these scientific, literary, and artistic disciplines seemed -- well -- TAXING. A slightly more modest and rather more achievable goal was to make a strangely half-lit black-and-white photograph of myself looking moody, serious, and complicated. I believe that I’ve succeeded.​